The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Devices such as metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) can be damaged due to electrostatic discharge (ESD). To protect MOSFETs in an integrated circuit (IC) from ESD, additional circuitry may be used externally or internally to the IC.
A super-high-voltage (SHV) MOSFET occupies a much larger die area in an IC than low-power MOSFETs. Accordingly, adding circuitry in the IC to protect the SHV MOSFET from ESD consumes additional die area in the IC, which is undesirable. The SHV MOSFETs therefore need to be self-protecting. That is, the SHV MOSFET in the IC needs to protect itself from ESD without the additional ESD protecting circuitry in the IC.